Saddam no dictator, says judge

Saddam Hussein was not a dictator, the chief judge at his genocide trial said yesterday.

Judge Abdullah al-Amiri made the remark in an exchange with the ousted Iraqi leader after a Kurdish farmer testified that he had visited one of Saddam's palaces in 1988 to plead for the lives of his family.

Saddam told the judge it made no sense to suggest that a survivor of the Anfal campaign - in which prosecutors say 180,000 Kurds died - would visit him "if Saddam Hussein was a dictator and was against the Kurdish people".

"You are not a dictator," the judge replied. "It is the people and the system that surround him that fabricated dictators." Smiling, Saddam said: "Thank you."

A day earlier Munqith al-Faroon, the chief prosecutor, had called on Mr Amiri, a former Baathist and judge under Saddam's regime, to step down.